Buccaneer by Thorndycroft Chris

Author:Thorndycroft, Chris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

Part 4 – The Spanish Main, Summer to Winter 1715

We gave chase but La Cuerva had too much of a lead on us and we lost sight of her as we entered the Turks and Caicos Islands. I seethed at our failure. Adolpho’s vengeance and freed slaves aside, I felt like everything we had achieved in the season so far had been stolen from us by Thomas Moon and his confederates. I had an empty hold and no hope of filling it for we had even fewer hands aboard than when we had set out.

“We had best take a prize soon,” Walters warned me. “The crew’s spirits are low. We’re well into the season and have nothing to show for it.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” I said irritably. “But we can hardly take any prizes with barely enough men to crew the ship.”

We made for Nassau. There really wasn’t any alternative. We asked around at the ramshackle taverns if anybody had sighted La Cuerva but she had not passed through the Bahamas. I knew that if we could recapture her the crew would be pleased enough but, with no leads as to where she was, it could take weeks to find her. We needed something to tide us over in the meantime.

There were more people in Nassau this time and we were able to sign on a few hands. Walters helped me come up with the articles, modelled on Avery’s ones. The captain gets two shares of all prizes, quartermaster a share and a half and every crewmember one share each. With hints that we were hunting a Spanish schooner laden with sugar, we signed on nearly a full crew and set out with much higher hopes than when we had limped into Nassau.

We sailed into the Florida Straits and began hunting for prey. Not two days into it, we spotted a Spanish sloop on its way to Havana. As we closed in, I knew that this was to be the moment of truth for me. My palms were sweaty as we ran up the black flag. I am no coward in a fight but as of yet, I had never hurled myself into a sea battle in which the flash of pistols and slash of cutlasses would be all around me. I had taken to my sword lessons well but facing an enemy who had been equally or better trained than me was to be my true baptism of fire.

The sloop fired its guns at us and we retorted with a broadside that raked them from stem to stern. Their sails and rigging in tatters, we crept alongside of them admirably under Harrison’s steady hands. I had the men arm themselves and those with muskets to scramble up the rigging and return fire at those on the sloop’s deck who had started taking pot shots at us. We felled a couple of them, and they quickly struck their colours.

The Spanish captain was in a rage but he refrained from putting his crew into danger by doing anything about it.

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